As consumers struggle to cope with rising petrol prices, India is looking at a new generation of biofuels derived from agricultural waste to revive an ambitious program for blending ethanol with gasoline.

As consumers struggle to cope with rising petrol prices, India is looking at a new generation of biofuels derived from agricultural waste to revive an ambitious program for blending ethanol with gasoline.

Mozambique makes history today as it witnesses the opening of the world’s first sustainable cooking fuel facility. Inaugurated by Federal Minister of Agriculture, José Pacheco, the facility will be dedicated to producing ethanol-based cooking fuel for sale with the company’s cookstoves in Mozambique’s capital Maputo. CleanStar’s complete “NDZiLO” cooking solution will offer Mozambican households an affordable new form of cooking that is cleaner, faster and safer than using charcoal.

A programme designed to support the development of energy services and build the capacity of energy operators in West Africa, is now entering its operational stage. Funded by an EU Energy Facility grant, and managed by Électricité de France (EDF), with local partners, the programme has already provided training to the first group of energy operators in Burkina Faso. GVEP supports this initiative by sponsoring the participation of the Malian rural electrification agency in the programme.

AlphaMundi Group is proud to announce the beginning of collaborations with two companies which provide energy solutions in East Africa. As a part of the collaborations, Fenix International and SolarNow will receiveinvestments from AlphaMundi’s Social Alpha-Bastion impact fund to finance the next stage of their growth.

The Geothermal Training Programme of the United Nations University (UNU-GTP) is a postgraduate training programme, aiming at assisting developing countries in capacity building within geothermal exploration and development. The programme consists of six months annual training for practicing professionals from developing and transitional countries with significant geothermal potential. Priority is given to countries where geothermal development is under way, in order to maximize technology transfer.

The programme has operated in Iceland since 1979. It is a cooperation between the United Nations University and the Government of Iceland and is hosted by the National Energy Authority (Orkustofnun).

1.6 billion people worldwide have no access to public electricity networks and are thus “off-grid.” They use lamps that burn fossil fuels, mostly kerosene. In the process, 77 billion liters of kerosene are burned every year and 190 million tons of CO2 are emitted. These lamps are not only dangerous and hazardous to health but also uneconomical and harmful to the environment. To stop this trend, Osram has developed a sustainable lighting solution for regions without power grids. In April 2008, a pilot project was launched on the banks of Lake Victoria in Kenya. Osram built solar-powered energy stations (O-hubs) where residents can recharge batteries for energy-saving lamps, lights, and other electrical devices like mobile phones and radios at low cost and with low impact on the environment. Using a pawnbroking system, Osram furnishes the residents with the necessary lighting products (O-lamps or O-boxes) that require no connection to a power grid. The only thing they have to pay for is charging up the batteries. The advantages are many: Thanks to the O-hubs, an hour of light costs much less than lighting with kerosene. What's more, the new lights and lamps are brighter, safer, healthier, and much more eco-friendly than the formerly used fossil-fueled lamps.

Rema Hanna, Esther Duflo and Michael Greenstone are the authors of a study on the long-run impact of improved cookstoves on health. The authors track households for up to 4 years after they received the stove. While they find a meaningful reduction in smoke inhalation in the first year, there is no effect over longer time horizons. They find no evidence of improvements in lung functioning or health and there is no change in fuel consumption (and presumably greenhouse gas emissions). The difference between the laboratory and field findings appears to result from households’ revealed low valuation of the stoves. Households failed to use the stoves regularly or appropriately, did not make the necessary investments to maintain them properly, and usage rates ultimately declined further over time. More broadly, this study underscores the need to test environmental and health technologies in real-world settings where behavior may temper impacts, and to test them over a long enough horizon to understand how this behavioral effect evolves over time.

The researchers behind the study, Rema Hanna of Harvard, and Esther Duflo and Michael Greenstone of theMassachusetts Institute of Technology, expected to confirm the health benefits of the $12.50 mud-based, chimneyed cookstoves installed in Orissa. In laboratory experiments, clean cookstoves have been shown to release fewer pollutants and burn more efficiently than traditional cooking methods. However, such tests can’t predict what will happen in the real world. That’s where a well-designed randomized trial is irreplaceable.

Based on case studies and analysis, this report recommends policy actions under three headings to achieve universal energy access while maximizing the contribution of decentralized and renewable energies: improving policy and planning by governments; enabling private sector and community action; and coordinating action at the international level. With these policy recommendations as a guide and with support from the international community and global institutions, the report demonstrates that it is possible to expand access to energy in a different way that contributes to the achievement of the MDGs in sub-Saharan Africa.

Procellantas in Colombia will recycle all components in used tires by way of thermal microwave treatment, thus avoiding toxic smoke from the burning of such tires or the overflowing of these into sanitary fillings in cities – both of which represent an alarmingly growing environmental problem throughout the region.

A new power plant in the eastern Senegalese village of Kalom is generating more than just electricity. Powered by agricultural waste, the station has lit up homes, lightened women's domestic burdens and even put a little money in some residents' pockets.

When one thinks of animal dung, one usually thinks: messy. Dutch research institute TNO has developed a prototype of a socket that turns biogas heat into electricity. Together with SNV and BoP Innovation Center, students at Delft University of Technology visited Rwanda for TNO to test this new prototype in people's homes. Who could have ever imagined, that one day mobile phones would be charged with cow dung?

Reaching the UN goal of providing sustainable energy for all by 2030 would create up to four million direct jobs in the off-grid electricity sector alone, according to a report released last week by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the main platform for intergovernmental cooperation for accelerated deployment of sustainable energy.

This study seeks to better understand the most important influences over household energy choices, in order to identify practical ways to support communities shifting to cleaner energy use. The authors use a qualitative “generative” research methodology to investigate energy use and dynamics in four villages in Haryana State. They find a range of social, cultural and financial factors that influence the way people make decisions about energy and cooking, including the availability and flexibility of traditional fuels, the type of dishes prepared, the taste of food, problems with smoke, the aesthetic appeal of stoves, and how users perceive alternatives.

Ten million low-income people living in rural communities in Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, will gain access to low-cost solar energy by 2015, in part due to a commitment made by solar energy provider Barefoot Power to the Business Call to Action (BCtA).

The BCtA is a global initiative that encourages private sector efforts to fight poverty, supported by several international organizations including the UN Development Programme (UNDP)

Barefoot Power and ARTI Energy, official distributor of Barefoot Power Products in Tanzania, cordially invite you to attend a seminar on opportunities to support low-cost solar for poverty alleviation in Tanzania.

Al Jazeera interviews Steen Riisgaard, CEO of Novozymes - a biotech company based in Denmark. He talks about green technologies, biofuels and government policiese. In Mozambique, Novozymes used its technology to create jobs. Novozymes is recruiting between 2,000 to 3,000 farmers to teach them a special kind of agroforestry in which they produce different crops. Farmers produce cassava that is sold for cash and is transformed in bioethanol used for cooking stoves to replace charcoal.

GVEP International engages with entrepreneurs, management teams, and project developers through a variety of donor-funded and commercial investment activities. We manage and cooperate with other providers on programmes which support enterprises and projects focused on increasing access to clean energy in Sub-Saharan Africa. These programmes provide business support as well as access to finance across the capital spectrum (grants, debt and equity).

To help us better understand your business or business concept, and identify ways we may be able to support you, please fill out the form below. We will review your submission, and if there may be potential to work together, we will get in touch.

Please note that only submissions for projects based in Sub-Saharan Africa will be considered at present.

Indoor air pollution emanating from open fires or leaky cookstoves is the fifth-largest health risk in the developing world, according to the World Health Organization. Massive deforestation caused by households collecting firewood is also a huge problem. The use of so-called "clean cookstoves" - stoves that use clean fuel such as natural gas, or cut down on solid fuels such as firewood - is being touted as a way of combating indoor air pollution and deforestation. Aid groups met in Kenya's capital recently to fine-tune promotion efforts.

According to the Renewable Energy Policy of 2007, Uganda has considerable unexploited renewable energy resources for energy production and provision of energy services. They include biomass, geothermal, large scale hydro, mini/small/micro/Pico hydro, wind and solar energy with total electrical capacity to generate 5, 300MW. But only 13% has been exploited.

Still, incentives are weak. Political will for energy expansion is in short supply, especially as glitches in existing infrastructure drain public funds. This suggests that significant funding for energy projects will need to be sourced internationally, but current donor-led international financing is not without its share of pitfalls. Liberia comes to mind (as discussed in my last post on clean energy), as does South Africa.

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